The Eye of Antares
by Ichabod Ebenezer
Summary: Nth Doctor part 7 of 12. The Doctor has regained entry to his Tardis, and travels with new companion, Blaise, to see the greatest work of art in all of space and time. When Blaise finds out that the planet is doomed, he urges the Doctor to break all laws of time to save it. What happens when the Doctor needs someone to stop him from going too far, and instead his companion pushes?
1. The Tardis

The Doctor put his new key into the Tardis and smiled broadly, savoring the moment. He pet the trim lovingly, ending with his hand on the handle of the door. He quickly turned the key and pushed open the door. As much as he desperately longed to go in, his favorite part was watching someone else get their first view of her interior, so he stepped back and let Blaise step inside.

Blaise could already clearly see that it was much bigger on the inside, but he couldn't wrap his mind around it. He leaned his head around the outside just to verify it wasn't some sort of trick, then he stepped inside, his boot heels echoing off the marble floor of the expansive room. He could immediately feel the thrum of a powerful engine sitting idle, and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the lighting.

There were round wooden pillars with corinthian style caps, stationed around the room with what looked like gas lamps on the four cardinal sides. The room itself was circular and fifty feet across. The walls were inset bookshelves interspaced with sections of exposed brass pipes, dials and valves. Several sections had pneumatic tubes that looked like a message delivery system. Above the bookshelves were round copper rings set into mahogany hexagons, one after another around the perimeter of the room. Doorways led out in three different directions.

In the center of the room was a hexagonal table covered with an odd assortment of instruments and sloped up toward the center, where a mass of crystals surrounded a copper tower capped by a golden ball. Looking up, Blaise could see another crystalline structure suspended from the ceiling some three stories overhead. There was a pulsating amber glow coming from beneath the console, and as he approached, he could detect the distinct smell of ozone.

The Doctor stepped inside and Obelix came padding in after him. The dog sniffed around for a while, then curled up on an afghan rug that laid against one wall. Also on the rug were a reclining chair, a small circular table, and right next to where Obelix laid his head, a silvery bowl of water. The Doctor closed the doors behind himself and looked around admirably. "So, what do you think?"

Blaise said nothing. He spun around to face the Doctor with his mouth wide open, but a sudden blast of steam from one of the pipes lining the walls diverted his attention and he rushed off to inspect it. He roamed the room, ending up at the console, examining a set of nixie tubes next to a split-flap display showing the current time and location, "25 12 2016 London Earth." Blaise ran a hand along the brass handrail that bordered the console, then he turned to face the Doctor and said, "I think she's amazing!"

The Doctor smiled proudly, looking around as well. "Yeah. She's outdone herself again." He walked up to the console and touched a few switches, not changing their position, just getting acquainted with them. He walked around the six sections, looking for the monitor, but in the end, all he found was a switch and a dial. He flipped the switch, and a view of Hyde Park appeared encircling the space above the console. The Doctor laughed in delight, and Blaise came over to join him.

Blaise reached out to touch the image, but his fingers passed through it. "Cool," he breathed.

The Doctor clapped his hands and rubbed them together, the sound of it startling Blaise. "So!" the Doctor said. "What say we get her circuits properly lubed up with a short jaunt, eh?" He switched off the monitor and dashed off to the other side of the console. He turned a wheel rapidly, reached across the length of the wedge he was standing at and turned a series of dials several clicks each. He ran to the wedge nearest the door and levered a pump repeatedly, then over one more wedge and he pushed the telegraph lever forward full.

There was a deep kettle drum boom, then the crystals atop the console rose while their opposites on the ceiling descended. Lightning leapt between them and surrounded the golden ball at the top of the console, casting a bright bluish-white light around the room and intensifying the smell of ozone in the room. The crystal matrix continued to pump, up and down, up and down. The Tardis lurched sideways, causing Blaise to stagger and catch his balance. Steam began releasing from random vents on the walls on a regular basis, and there was a hesitant whining, growling sound of the ship's engines in action.

Blaise leaned forward to hold onto the console railing with both hands, but almost as soon as he did, the ship settled. The console crystals returned to their original position, the whining growl stopped, and the boom of the drum signaled their full stop. "We've landed?" he asked, tentatively letting go of the railing.

The doctor pulled the lever back to full stop. "Landed? Who said anything about landing?" He laughed loudly and ran to the doors, throwing them wide.

Outside was darkness, but the Doctor's face was bathed in a red light from an unseen source. Blaise walked cautiously toward the doors, the Doctor's expression encouraging him forward. Obelix padded forward, but sat on his haunches before he got to the door. He slid a ways, then back-peddled and sat down a comfortable distance from the door. He started whining.

Blaise looked to the Doctor again, not sure what he was heading toward. "Smart dog," the Doctor said, then to Blaise, "Come on. It's safe."

Finally Blaise got to the door and saw what was outside. He gasped and stepped back. The Doctor chuckled and put a hand on his shoulder. "Isn't that the most glorious thing you've ever seen?" He gently guided Blaise back to the doorway.

Blaise gripped the doorframe with both hands and leaned his head back out.

They were floating in space. Darkness surrounded them. Off to one side and below them, a large red star provided the light Blaise had seen reflected on the Doctor. A tail of glowing gas pulled away from the star and circled around a smaller blue point of light nearby. It spiraled inward and fed the tiny star as the two slowly circled each other.

"Five hundred million years in your future, and relatively close by, in case you were wondering where we were. Back in your day, that little bluish-white thing used to be the larger of these two stars, and in fact was the only one you could see from Earth. Now it keeps stealing material from its celestial neighbor until it gets big enough to blast off its outer layers all over again. If you lean a bit —" the Doctor said, demonstrating by holding onto the door frame with one hand and leaning out at about forty-five degrees, "— you can see the clouds left over from its previous blasts."

Blaise steeled up his courage and leaned out the door, not nearly as far as the Doctor was, but enough to see a distant, nebulous cloud reflecting back the blues and the reds of the stars they were slowly orbiting. Blaise lost track of time, staring out there at all there was to see, the intricacies of this cosmic dance. At some point he felt that he was being watched and snapped out of it. He pulled his head back inside the Tardis and saw the Doctor leaning against the door jamb, eating sweets and watching him in amusement.

Blaise coughed self consciously and stepped away from the door. The Doctor reached over and closed both of them. "Well, now that you've seen what she can do, where do you want to go?"

"Me? Why me? I-I don't even know what's out there." Blaise said, taken aback.

"Everything is out there, Blaise!" the Doctor said, slapping him on the back. He swept back to the console and switched back on the monitor. The tiny blue-white dot circled and consumed it's giant red companion above the console. "All of time and space! From the Big Bang to the Heat Death, from the Mutter's Spiral to the E-space Gate, and yes, you. I've been there, I've done that." He unzipped his hoodie and held it wide open. "I've even bought the t-shirt."

"Everything is too much! I want to see it all, but I don't know what to tell you, I don't know where to start. I don't know what anything is called," Blaise explained.

"Let's start small then. Past or future? Do you want to meet Romans? Watch the Rapa Nui erect the Easter Island heads?" the Doctor suggested.

"Future. Definitely future. I was never too keen on history in school."

"That's a start. Now, where do your passions lie? Not history, I'm guessing not maths, despite your namesake. Science? Exploration? The humanities? Who do you one day hope to be?"

"Art," Blaise perked up. "I want to be an artist. It's just graffiti right now, but some day I'll have money and I'll work in a studio above a cafe and I'll show the world what I see. I want to make beauty out of pain. I want to show people the things they usually look away from."

The Doctor nodded. "Now that I can work with. You're looking for inspiration. Experience is the greatest teacher, and I can show you more in a week than most people see in a lifetime. And why not start at the top!" He ran around the console, flipping switches, turning dials and pressing buttons. "I know where we're going!"

Blaise stepped up to the console and gripped the handrail, preparing for another jump. "And where is that?"

The Doctor paused. "Antares III," he said and continued his mad romp around the console.

"And what's there?"

"Nothing of any consequence, really. Only, and without rival, the greatest artist who will ever live." The Doctor stopped again, one hand on the telegraph lever, then he plunged it forward with a huge, mad smile.

* * *

They touched down, and the Doctor ran to the doors again. He threw them open and took a deep breath. "Oh, I really missed that. The smell of someplace new. Not that there's anything wrong with London, mind you."

Obelix padded over to the door and stuck his nose out cautiously. "Not this time, big guy," the Doctor said, bending down and scratching behind the dog's ears with both hands. "No pets in the museum. I promise you, next time. Bo!" The dog sat down immediately, and the Doctor stood up quickly. "Speaking of which…" He ran off through one of the doorways without further explanation. When he came back he had a small embroidered coin purse. He tossed it in the air and caught it again. "A few Antarian farthings left over from my last visit. Ought to get us in. Come along, Blaise!" He stopped in the doorway again. "Hah! How about, 'Let's blaze!' It can be our catch-phrase!"

Blaise trudged out the door, hands in his pockets. "Real people don't have catch-phrases," he said as he passed.

"Sure," the Doctor muttered, turning to close and lock the doors. "Spoil all the fun."

The Doctor turned to see that Blaise hadn't gotten far. He was looking around in wonder again. They'd landed in the middle of a park of sorts, all concrete paths and sculptured trees with yellow leaves. There was a manufactured pond nearby and children were sailing boats of alien design, skipping stones and flying kites. The sun hung, a deep red in the light pink of the sky.

The Doctor stood behind him, giving him a few moments to take it in, then put his hands on Blaise's shoulders and gently spun him around. "That's what we came here for."

A short ways off was a large building of entirely foreign architecture. It blended elements of classical and modern, but with an alien cast to everything. There were columns, but they were angular and looked like they were made from a rosy amber-like material. Stained-glass arches reminded him of cathedrals, but they were pointed at both top and bottom, and there was no leading between the colors, they just sort of blended together. There was a sign out front that was part fountain, and proclaimed the building to be the "Planetary Museum of the Arts".

They headed toward it, passing vendors selling frozen confections and snacks to children and their parents. Blaise found himself focusing on the familiar aspects of it all. The children were holding the plastic strings of mylar balloons. They ate what looked like red popcorn from familiar square paper packages. When he was passed by a tall bird-like creature in a white robe with gold trim, he suddenly realized everyone else he'd seen so far was human, or at least looked it.

"Hey! Everybody looks human! Well, except that guy," he said indicating the bird.

The Doctor pushed his hand down. "That woman. And she can hear you," he said in low tones. "We're a hundred thousand years in your future. The human race began colonizing the solar system within a hundred years of when we left, and by now, they're all over the galaxy. We're six hundred light years from Earth. Wars have been fought and peaces have been made, and the human race lives side by side with species from all over the universe. This hunk of rock we're walking on wasn't even habitable when you lot got here, but humans are brilliant creatures, and they've terraformed it and molded it to their specifications. They imported an atmosphere and moved it further from its star until it was perfect. You'll find a few species here that you don't recognize, particularly once we enter the museum, but don't forget: Everyone here is an alien, so in a way, no one is."

There was a queue for the entrance, and Blaise looked around while they waited to pay. He had a chance to touch the wall on the way in, and could tell that what he had mistaken for amber was actually a form of metal, but it let a bit of light through, making it appear warm. He could see a few paintings in the nearest section, mostly abstract, and a bronze statue with some seating placed around it. He also found a few more alien species amongst the visitors. There was one that looked roughly human, and was wearing what Blaise would consider a business suit, but his neck was twice as long as normal, and he had a horse-like tail sticking out over the top of his pants. There was a family of four legged creatures with a soft, leathery look to their grayish brown skin and eyes on stalks that moved independently. Blaise was interrupted by the attendant telling him to put his hand out, which the man stamped, then they were let in.

The Doctor was handed a leaflet, but he just put it in his inside hoodie pocket. He knew where they were going, and was happy to wander along with Blaise until they got there.

Blaise was fascinated by the sculpture, which no one else was paying much attention to. "Is this a real creature, or something mythological?"

"It's real enough, though stylized a bit," the Doctor confirmed.

Blaise nodded and walked on. He walked up to a painting and read the artist's name, then stood back and considered the work for a bit before moving on to the next. He payed more attention to the line of sculptures that formed a line down the center of the hall they were in. There was one of a woman in what appeared to be a frontier outfit gazing off into the distance with a futuristic pistol in hand while a flock of bird-like mammals circled overhead. They were clearly made of the same black metal as the woman, but they were suspended in the air with no visible connection to the rest of the sculpture. Blaise smiled. "Wow."

The Doctor smiled back. "Just you wait."

They continued on in this way to the end of the hall, then the Doctor lead Blaise back to a wing of the museum that branched off the main hallway. A sign suspended from the ceiling proclaimed "Mélange" and pointed down the other branch.

The first item they came to was a self-portrait. Mélange was the artist's name. He stood, crooked shoulders and hands in pockets. He had a mass of curly black hair drooping down lazily over his roughly handsome face. The painting was in black and white, with the exception of one piercing blue eye. It was an incredibly good painting, with subtle brush strokes and a myriad of tones within the range of black to white and a masterful understanding of light and shadow that made it appear to stand out from the frame in three dimensions, and nearly breath with life. The lines of the painting kept drawing Blaise back to that one blue eye, and the Doctor smiled knowingly as Blaise stepped close to the canvas, staring into that eye.

Suddenly Blaise gasped. "Oh. My. God," he said. The blue eye was a painting all on its own. It made Blaise think of that old saying, that the eyes are a window to the soul, and in this case, it really was. There, within that blue spot were subtle images, each one distinct, of moments in the artist's life, from early childhood on. It was glassy and three dimensional, and there were images behind images and he saw others in the corners as he focused on one. It was gorgeous beyond anything Blaise had ever seen before. He wanted to reach out and touch the surface.

The Doctor caught his arm. Blaise didn't even realize he'd moved it. "Best not to," the Doctor said.

"No. Of course." Blaise stepped back from the painting, afraid he'd do it again.

"There's more, this way," the Doctor suggested.

"This is him, isn't it? The greatest ever?" Blaise asked in awe.

"Spotted that, did you? Just wait. We're leading up to something."

They moved on down the hall, and everything they looked at was the new best thing Blaise had ever seen. Mélange worked in all sorts of mediums as well. There were more paintings, but also photographic mosaics and sculptures. Blaise noted that there were common themes though, once he'd seen a few, he'd be able to recognize Mélange's work anywhere he saw it, in whatever medium it appeared. There was a sense of perspective, of dimensionality that all his works captured that made them more than they were. His paintings had a depth, a motion; an emotion to them. They made the viewer feel exactly what the artist intended, they drew the eye in a precise way, and they rewarded the viewer for following that visual path. His sculptures did not move on their own, nor did they use any technological trick of free-flight like the ones in the hall outside, but when the observer moved, they revealed something new. They were like a new sculpture from every angle, and as Blaise moved around each one, they told a story. More than once, Blaise wiped tears from his eyes.

The Doctor drew him on down the hall, but Blaise would have been happy standing with any one of these works all day. The Doctor had to keep reminding him that there were others here, and in fact, the hall was quite busy. Blaise just didn't notice anyone else when he was looking at one of Mélange's works.

At the end of the hall was a doorway, above which was a plaque reading, "The Eye". Through the doorway was a carpeted wall, curved away from them. Visitors were entering to the left and exiting from the right, but were moving fast enough that there wasn't any actual queue. Blaise followed the Doctor, and the carpeted wall on their right turned out to be a clever baffle that kept anyone from seeing the Eye at all until they could see it in its entirety. Once Blaise came around that corner and could see it, he stopped, stunned.

It was like being inside a plasma globe that had been frozen in an instant of time. Pink and blue lightning arced out from a central point in multiple directions, without motion, but without being made of anything discernible; it wasn't glass, or plastic containing light, like a neon sign. It was just light, frozen solid.

The path they were on just looped in a circle and back out around the Eye, and as Blaise stood there watching, he could see people walk through the bolts of light. He reached out a hand for the nearest one and felt the slightest tingle as his fingers passed through it. Blaise couldn't help but laugh with delight as he turned to the Doctor. "How —?"

"The how isn't important," the Doctor said. "It's what he did with it. It's taking the concept and making it real. Come along."

Blaise looked back, suddenly realizing there were more people coming in behind him. He continued on around the Eye, but only got another step before he froze again. As soon as he had moved, the Eye had shifted. The bolts of plasma or lightning or whatever they were moved wildly around the room as Blaise moved, but froze again when he stopped. One of the arcs had even snapped and reformed somewhere else.

Blaise quickly stepped back to his original position and watched the Eye move backward in time. He stepped forward and watched that same arc snap and reform. He took several more steps, then one step backward, marveling at the way it moved. He crouched low, then stood up again, the scene changed and reverted. Blaise turned to the Doctor again. "And you see it move when you move?"

The Doctor just nodded.

"This is incredible!" Blaise continued on slowly around the room, pausing now and again to appreciate it from the new angle, until he got to the mid-way point and he could suddenly see why it was called, 'The Eye'. At this point, the various blue-pink arcs all converged on two points, one on the left and the other on the right, and with the plasma ball in the center, it did look like an eye looking back at Blaise; into Blaise. It reminded him of the Lord of the Rings movies and the eye of Sauron.

He was having trouble wrapping his mind around it. He was watching people walking into the room and passing through that focal point on the right, and more walking out, passing through the other one. When Blaise had touched it, it tingled, but no one gave any sign that they felt it as they passed through. Blaise further realized that when he'd walked through those spots, he had seen the beams as being elsewhere, so for those people, they were not passing through the beams at all. He shook his head and gave up trying to understand it, and instead just experienced it.

Blaise crouched again, and the Eye looked down. He stood on tiptoe, and it looked up. He leaned one way, then the other, and the Eye followed him up to a point, then the various arcs snapped their symmetry and wandered randomly around the room until he returned to the center and they all coalesced into the Eye once more.

"This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen," Blaise said without taking his eyes off of it.

Many other people in the room looked over at him when he spoke and either smiled or nodded, or in some other fashion indicated their agreement, or maybe just their acknowledgement of his feelings.

The Doctor leaned over his shoulder and said quietly enough so that no one else could hear him, "Take it all in, because in under twenty-four hours, it will be gone forever.


	2. Antares

"What do you mean, 'gone forever?'" Blaise asked, tearing his eyes away from the Eye of Antares for the first time.

"I'll tell you on our way out of here," the Doctor responded quietly and began walking toward the exit.

The Doctor was mysteriously silent as they left the Eye and headed out of the museum. Blaise followed along, waiting for the Doctor to explain himself, but instead the Doctor walked up to a street vendor's food cart. "Two qualls please, with everything." He turned to Blaise. "You hungry?"

"Yes, I'm hungry," Blaise said. "Confused, impatient and hungry."

"Better make it three qualls then." The Doctor handed the vendor some coins, and the vendor handed him three things that looked like hotdogs with a brown relish and some shaved white vegetable. He stuck one in his hoodie pocket and handed another one over to Blaise, then unwrapped the third and started away from the vendor. He took a bite of his quall and motioned for Blaise to eat up. "You see, that work of art, this museum and this world are about to be destroyed." The Doctor paused to chew and swallow, then he squinted and pointed toward the sun, which was now a little past its zenith in the sky. "Now normally, when a star goes nova, it slowly grows over a period of hundreds of years or even thousands, then collapses and suddenly blows off its outer layers. But if they are just the right size, a very precise mass, they can balance out the forces until the very moment they explode. Just like this one will. Today. Well, tonight." The Doctor took another bite of his quall. "The other side of the world will be in daylight, but that won't save the Eye."

"I don't get it, Doctor," Blaise said. "If that's the case, then why aren't we doing something about it?"

"We did do something," the Doctor said. "We came and we saw the Eye of Antares. It will live on in our memories."

"No, I mean about the world. Isn't that what you do? Save people? Worlds even?"

"I'm truly sorry, but no. Not this time. This isn't some hostile alien species causing the star to go nova, this is nature taking its course. The destruction of Antares III is a fixed point in time. It has to happen." The Doctor took another bite, infuriating Blaise.

"What does that even mean? A fixed point?" Blaise asked, waving his quall around.

"Look, time has a way of correcting the little things. This street food we picked up, for example. Either it would have gone unsold at the end of the day, or someone who would have purchased it has to find something else to eat. Either way it won't be consequential. The money we paid for the food or the museum entry won't significantly alter the economy. The timelines will correct for it."

"Yeah, because the food cart owner will be dead in the morning along with the rest of his world," Blaise spat.

"Okay, bad example," the Doctor admitted. He finished off his quall and balled up the wrapper while coming up with a better explanation. "You are familiar with the saying, 'For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost?' Well, for time-travelers, it doesn't work that way. If you popped back to 1812 and took a blacksmith's last nail before he shod a horse, they'd make do and the battle would go on. If you took the horse, the battle would turn out just the same with one less in the fight. The fact that the outcome is already known means that the little things you do don't change events. Even big ones. If you did manage to pop back and knock off Hitler, guess what? Six million Jews still die horribly and the German offensive gets stopped at Stalingrad.

"But a fixed point is a different story. There is a major peace deal set to take place here in a week, except that the planet is destroyed. A luxury cruise from Altair is nearing the planet, but it won't reach its intended destination. A group of scientists are close to a discovery that will allow them to move entire planets light years away in seconds. Each of these things and hundreds more will have drastic effects on the course of history. If you tried to change something so major as the destruction of this world, the timelines would rip themselves apart trying to get back to normal. Reality itself would be shredded. It could mean the very end of the universe."

That was a lot to think about, and Blaise started in on his own quall to ruminate. "Okay, but something smaller then. We could save some of the people, couldn't we? How would it matter to the universe if a few people, maybe even a few hundred survived?"

The Doctor sighed. "And which ones would you choose? And what would you say to convince them to leave?"

"I don't know," Blaise said in frustration, "any of them is better than none of them though!"

"I'm sorry, Blaise, but it would never work."

"Then what about the Eye of Antares? Huh? What if we stole it, right before the explosion?"

"The Eye of Antares has been written into song and legend. It has inspired artists across the galaxy. The fact that it was destroyed today and has been lost to time is a well-known fact. Like the Colossus at Rhodes, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. If it hadn't been destroyed, the effect it had on so many would have been negated. And since it's in the history books, it has to happen this way."

"But, can't we steal it, then go to some distant point in the future when its been forgotten and drop it off there?" Blaise persisted.

"Blaise, believe me. I wish we could. It is recorded that the Eye was on Antares III right up until the planet's destruction. There are just some things you have to accept in this world. But think of it this way: Isn't the transitive nature of Melange's work part of what makes it the greatest in the universe?"

Blaise was silent for a long time before finally saying, "I suppose."

He didn't feel very hungry anymore, so Blaise wrapped the remainder of his quall in the wrapper and dejectedly tossed it into a rubbish bin. The two of them walked along in silence for a while. "Can I see it again?" Blaise finally asked. "Just once more. Before we leave. I want to remember this."

"Sure," the Doctor said, placing a hand on Blaise's shoulder and squeezing consolingly.

They walked back to the museum and showed their hand stamps to get back in. They went straight to the Eye, and Blaise walked from viewing angle to viewing angle, stopping for a while at each location to consider the Eye from that pose before moving on to the next. This late in the day, there was a lot less traffic in the museum, and they had the Eye pretty much to themselves.

"Hey, Doctor? Something just occurred to me," Blaise said. "If this is considered the greatest lost artwork in all the universe, why isn't the room filled with time-travelers on its very last day?"

The Doctor chuckled. "You meet one alien, who happens to have a time machine, and you think they all do, is that it?"

Blaise turned red with embarrassment. "No — I didn't mean -"

"As it turns out, time travel isn't that common. You've got the Time Lords — my people, but they just stay out of everything. Boring. Then you've got the Daleks, but the only reason they use time travel is to kill everything in existence. They don't care about art. The Sontarans have a form of time travel, but they can't direct it well, and once again, they use it pretty much exclusively for war. There aren't a whole lot of others. Sure, some will feed off of time energy, and others will use time as a weapon of one sort or another, but until the humans eventually figure it out, that's about it."

Blaise continued to walk around the room, sometimes closer, sometimes further away, stopping in each spot to soak in the view.

"Are you about ready to go? Time's ticking."

"Give me a moment. If I'm the last person who ever sees this thing, I want to be sure I can at least tell people about it."

The Doctor held up his hands and stood back against the wall to give Blaise his time.

"You see, at first I thought it was all random. It looks like it is. But there are certain spots where if you stand still it all comes together. The true Eye, when you are dead center is the obvious one, but there are others." He stepped back a few paces and squatted a little. "Like this one. All those random sort of beams are lined up at this point straight toward me so it looks like I'm staring down a tunnel at the Eye. Then I move away a little bit," and he demonstrated by taking a forward step, " and it's back to the random stuff."

"There's even some points like that way down low," he continued, getting down on his knees and moving around looking for such a spot, "I don't know if these were put here for kids, or some sort of alien species that's like really short, but they're a bit more playful." He found one and stopped moving for a bit. "Like this one. It reminds me of those pinwheels that kids will blow on, and it even spins for a moment if you move just right, before randomizing again. But I caught another one before that was like a spider web."

He stood up and started walking back toward the Doctor. "But that's only the first layer. There are other things that you can't see while you're sitting still, but suddenly they turn into something when you're moving, like those old, what do they call them? Kinescopes or something."

"Zoetropes," the Doctor said.

"Yeah! Those. Like right now, I can just see a couple of those rays are crossing a bit, but if you move through here, the frames run together and you can see a bird take flight."

Blaise continued around the Eye crouching and kneeling, sometimes running for several paces, or waving his head forward and backward again. From time to time, someone else would wander in and gasp, stay for a while, then leave. No one stayed as long as Blaise did, but then again, nobody understood that there would never be another opportunity to see it.

Finally, Blaise turned to the Doctor and said sadly, "Alright. I've got it as well as I'm ever going to. Let's go."

They walked in silence through the museum and outside. Finally Blaise said something that broke the silence. "What about her?" he asked.

The Doctor looked up and saw where Blaise was pointing. A mousy young woman was sitting by herself at a bench and reading some small device.

"What _about_ her?" the Doctor asked.

"Does history say that this woman here dies? Is she _specifically_ mentioned anywhere?"

"No," the Doctor said tentatively. "Not specifically. At least not that I know of. The reports mainly deal more in terms of statistics. Historians use phrases like, 'No one survived,' or 'Everyone died'.

"So then what would the effect be on the timelines if we saved her?" Blaise demanded. "Come on, Doctor, we've got to do _something_."

The Doctor sighed. "You don't understand. How do you convince her to come with us? 'Excuse me, miss, your planet's about to be destroyed, but I've got a time machine. You wanna come with?' And _she_ isn't just _her_. Assuming you could convince her to come with us, she'd want to save her husband, he'd want to save his sister and her kids. She'd want to save her neighbor, and he'd want to save his mum, and she'd want to save her bridge partner — and she could never leave until we rounded up all her cats — and so on."

"So? What's wrong with saving them too? Or does history mention any of them? Maybe we can't save Mélange. Maybe I can learn to accept that. Maybe we can't save the Eye either, but why not her and her loved ones?"

"And at what point is it enough? Do we save this family? Their neighbors? This city? This country?"

"This world!" Blaise shouted. The woman looked up from the book she was reading, a worried expression on her face. "And why not? Aren't they worth it? Or is it because you're not from _here_ either? You go from place to place where you haven't any skin in the game and it doesn't matter what happens as long as you have an adventure! You won't save that girl because you are afraid to save the world!"

"The damage to the timeline-" the Doctor argued.

"Then we _fix_ the damage!" Blaise seethed.

The Doctor was quiet for some time.

When he finally spoke, it was in a soft, but resolute voice. "Okay."

"Okay? What does 'okay' mean?" Blaise asked, still angry and wary of the sudden change of tone.

"Haven't I proven it enough? Haven't I always acted in the best interest of time, of the universe itself? Haven't I defied the most impossible of odds to do what's best?"

It took Blaise a moment or two to realize that the Doctor wasn't talking to him. The Doctor was pacing now, and seemed to be directing his argument at the sky itself, or possibly Antares. "Haven't I faced the ends of universes and of time itself and always — _always_ , fixed things? I _can_ repair the damage! I've certainly fixed worse. No one here deserves to die, not at the whim of some celestial event. Even a single soul saved today is better than standing by and watching a planet burn, isn't it?" He looked to Blaise, as if for some confirmation, but turned again and continued his rant before Blaise had a chance to say a word. "Who would hold me in judgement for that? The Time Lords? Ha! For all the damage they've done following those laws they hold so dear… The CIA? I dare them to try! The Shadow Proclamation?"

The Doctor had whipped himself into a frenzy. When he had finished he turned toward Blaise, panting, with a maniacal look in his eyes that scared Blaise a little.

"So, what does this mean?" Blaise asked nervously, "Are we going to save her?"

"We're going to do better than that, Blaise," the Doctor replied with a smile that made him look even more frightening, "we're going to save the whole world."


	3. Too Far

"Come on," the Doctor said and turned on his heel, walking quickly away.

"But, I don't understand. What about her?" Blaise asked, indicating the woman on the bench that they had just been discussing saving.

"Leave her," the Doctor called over his shoulder. "It's time to start thinking bigger."

Blaise had to run to catch up with the Doctor, who showed no sign of slowing for him. "Where are we going?" Blaise asked once he'd come alongside the Doctor and matched his quick walk.

"To the Tardis," the Doctor said. His expression had changed again. His brow was furrowed and his eyes darted.

"What do you have there that can save the world?" Blaise asked.

"You'll see!" the Doctor said with a finality that ended any chance of discussion.

They walked quietly and purposefully to the Tardis and the Doctor dug the key out of his pocket. He popped it in the lock and swung the door open. Obelix was still waiting in the same spot where he had been when they left the Tardis earlier that day. He stood and started wagging his tail when they entered. The Doctor rushed past the dog, but he pulled the quall out of his pocket and threw it onto the floor in front of Obelix as he flew past.

The Doctor pulled a lever that closed the doors with a hum, then danced around the Tardis console throwing switches, pumping primers, turning dials, ringing bells and spinning cranks.

"Just need to increase power to the dimensional stabilizers!" he said as he whipped a large dial from one end of its range to the opposite. The background hum of the Tardis increased in volume. He started tapping at an old typewriter somehow melded into the console. "Reprogram the paradox inhibitors…" He ran around to another wedge and started flipping down a bank of switches. "Disable the Spacial Proximity Relocation system!" The volume increased again, and the Doctor began laughing loudly.

Blaise followed the Doctor around the console, watching what he was doing and listening to his narration. "Disconnect reality brake," he said, pulling back a large throttle lever. The Tardis rocked momentarily.

"What is the point of all this? How will this help us save the planet?" Blaise asked.

"Traveling through space and time isn't exactly safe," the Doctor said, "The Tardis has a ton of safety protocols in place to keep us from accidentally doing something stupid, like materializing in the middle of a star, or next to a nuclear device about to go off, or colliding with another traveller heading the opposite direction. What we're about to do is monumentally stupid, so I need to disable all of the safety interlocks."

"Is… is that smart? I mean, don't we need those?"

The Doctor ran around and turned the handle of a squeaky crank wheel. "We're heading into uncharted territory here! This isn't the sort of thing you can manage by playing it safe!" He slammed a fist down hard on an oversized green button. The lights dimmed, and the engine hum slowed to nearly stopping, but then cranked back up even higher than it was before. Obelix began whimpering.

"What are we doing that the safety thingys would have prevented?" Blaise asked, following closely behind the Doctor.

"We are going," the Doctor said with a mad gleam in his eyes, "to materialize _around_ the planet! Then we'll carry it someplace safe!" He flipped another lever dramatically, and sparks flew from the console. "Don't mind those. It's supposed to do that!"

Blaise covered his head to avoid the shower of sparks. When it was safe he asked, "Can we do that? I mean, she's big, but we're talking about a planet! She can't be _that_ big!" He had to shout over the rising sound of the engine hum.

"Hah! You have no idea!" the Doctor shouted back. "I just have to make a little room first! Delete a few rooms we're not using, then we'll have plenty of space!"

The Doctor ran around the console to a bank that was all small switches and one big button. "Well, a few thousand rooms, anyway," the Doctor amended. "Sarah Jane's old room — gone!" He flipped a switch and moved over to another "Lucy Miller's room! Don't know why I was still holding on to that one." Flip. "Amy Williams!" Flip. "Adric's room!" He paused with his hand on the switch for a few moments, a sad look on his face, then flipped it decisively. "Goodbye Adric. Leela's room… Well, we'll skip that one, you never know, she might be back. But Victoria Waterfield, Dodo Chaplet, Ben Jackson, Mary Shelly, good bye, one and all!" He swept a finger down one column of switches and moved around to another bank. He held one in the middle between his thumb and forefinger. "No need for a swimming pool, just now." He flipped it. "In fact, no need for any of these." He laid down across the bank of switches with his arms outstretched. He moved across them in a wave, flipping them all. He slammed his fist down on the big red button, and the console rained down sparks again. The Tardis lurched as if it had suddenly been dropped three or four feet and recovered. Blaise dove for the handrail.

The Doctor ran around the console to stand in front of the big telegraph lever. He tried to push it forward, but it barely budged. He put both hands on it and pushed with all his might. It clicked forward, slowly, but eventually he got all the way to 'Full Ahead'. The Tardis wrenched and groaned. The cloisters sounded. "Come on, old girl! You can take it!" He ran around to a compressor and started pumping it for all he was worth. The noises grew louder and the shaking grew worse. The console began to spark and pop all over.

"I thought you said the planet would fit!" Blaise yelled over the noises the Tardis was making.

"The problem isn't the planet! It's all the timelines collapsing onto this space-time location! She's having trouble handling the paradox!" He ran to another spot on the console and spun a wheel. "Hold down that button there until the pressure equalizes!" the Doctor yelled.

Blaise found the button the Doctor was frantically pointing at and pressed it in. A jet of hot steam shot loudly out of the underside of the console and several spots along the walls. The Doctor turned a crank on the far side of the console, and the steam slowly dissipated.

"Must compensate for the compressing timelines!" he yelled. He ran around to another section on the console and reached for a large red button. Just as he was about to slam a hand down on it, the Tardis bucked and he was thrown to the ground. He picked himself up, laughing, and staggered back to the console. He got one hand on the rail and raised up his other fist above the button. The cloister bell rang again, but the Doctor ignored it. The maniacal look had returned to his eyes, and his lips were drawn back in a mirthless, determined, rictus of a grin.

Obelix came out of nowhere, and bit down on the Doctor's outstretched arm.

The dog shook its mouth back and forth, growling. The Doctor cried out in pain and backed away. Obelix let go and stood with his front legs low to the ground and his hackles up, growling at the Doctor.

The cloister bell rang again, echoing hollowly around the console room. The sparking of the console increased. There was an explosion somewhere deep in the inner workings of the Tardis, and the glow emanating from below the console went out.

The Doctor stood, holding his bleeding wrist, staring at it in shock.

Blaise came up behind Obelix and grabbed him by the collar. "Nej! Bad Obelix!" he scolded the dog and tried to pull him away.

"No!" the Doctor shouted. "Don't scold him." He pulled a handkerchief from his hoodie pocket and wrapped it around his wrist, stuffing the ends inside his sleeves. "He only did what you should have."

The Doctor held up both hands and walked around the other side of the console. He grasped the large lever and pulled it easily backward. The groaning and shaking of the Tardis immediately subsided. The cloister bell rang once more, and fell into silence.

The Doctor walked slowly around the Tardis, idly resetting switches with his good hand, deep in thought. The hum of the engines lowered in pitch until they returned to their ordinary background level. He walked around to the dials in front of the nixie lamps, twisting them each, and pulled down the telegraph lever. The crystal matrix at the heart of the console began its oscillations and the grinding engine noise began.

"I don't understand. What are you doing?" Blaise asked.

"I'm bringing you back home," the Doctor said.

"Why?"

"Because you nearly got me to compromise my principles for something I desperately wanted. Because you didn't fulfill your role as a companion."

"But what about the people we were going to save? What's going to happen to the Eye?"

"In just over an hour, their sun is going to go supernova, and all life, and all art, will be wiped from the planet. But do you know what? Everybody dies when their time comes. And there are worse ways of dying than instantaneously, and worse company to die in than your entire planet."

"So that's it. You're just going to let them all die," Blaise said accusingly.

"Let me ask you something. If I hadn't told you about the supernova, how do you suppose this day would have gone for you?" the Doctor asked.

"But you _did_ tell —"

"You travelled through space and time to another world. You met alien life forms of which you've never dreamed. You ate exotic foods and encountered art that challenged your very ideas of what art could even be. In short, you've experienced something that very few humans will for hundreds of years."

Blaise looked down at his feet. When he spoke again, it was with some embarrassment. "But I wanted to save people."

"I do too," the Doctor said. "And I do. I save people and right wrongs, but this wasn't something wrong, it was just…" He waved his arms vaguely in the air, "stuff that happens. It would be wrong to try to change it. It's playing god."

There was a deep resonant sound like a mallet against an empty oil barrel, and the central column came to rest.

The Doctor reset the lever and walked over to Blaise, putting his good arm around him. "There are many reasons I bring a companion along with me. Chief among them is to vicariously rediscover that sense of wonder when encountering something new, but almost as important, is to keep me from going too far." He guided Blaise to the doors and opened one up. They were back in Hyde Park on a warm, recently damp evening.

"Goodbye Blaise," the Doctor said.

Blaise took a few steps out into the dewey grass and turned. "Goodbye Doctor." He stood searching for the words and settled on, "I'm sorry it didn't work out." He started to turn, then looked back. "You should have that arm looked at," then he turned and walked away without another glance back.

The Doctor leaned against the doorway, watching him go, quiet and pensive himself.

Obelix padded up to the Doctor and nuzzled his injured hand. The Doctor looked down and scratched behind the dog's ear, smiling faintly. "Don't worry, boy. After what you did, you'll always have a place on the Tardis."

"Hey Spaceman," came a voice, surprising the Doctor. He turned, delighted to see Pandora walking toward them carrying her box as usual, an enigmatic smile on her face.

Obelix ran up and bounded around her.

"Pandora!" the Doctor said brightly. "Or should I say, Sadie?"

Pandora hugged the dog and scratched at the spot between his shoulder blades, before answering. She scrunched up one eye and tilted her head and said, "Pandora works. Pandora feels like who I am."

They stood smiling at each other for several seconds, neither one saying anything. Finally the Doctor broke the silence by stating the obvious. "You came back."

"Yes. I was actually here for a few hours yesterday too. Spent Christmas with my mum though. That was… something."

"How is she?" the Doctor asked.

"She's good. She was incredibly happy to see me. Kept going on about how much I've grown, and what I've done to my hair and stuff."

"And that's it?" the Doctor probed.

She sighed. "And we talked. We got out the whole conversation about why I left and where I've been and stuff. There was yelling on both parts. A lot of crying too, but I was very patient, you would have been proud. I knew it needed to come out. And we cried so much. Both of us. And we had Christmas pudding. And we did crackers."

Pandora smiled her little sidelong one-eye-closed smile and continued. "I waited, still, until she was quiet for a full minute, sitting there with a stupid paper crown on, and I brought the album out like it was a Christmas present. And we talked about what happened in 1987." Her smile broadened. "She was so freaked out. It was like she'd convinced herself that it hadn't really happened, but suddenly she recognized me. And Fishbone! We listened to it, by the way, several times. It's good. Anyway, that's when she brought out the wine. Eventually I got up the courage to ask about dad," Pandora said.

"And what did she say?" the Doctor asked.

Pandora bit her lip to keep from crying again. She smiled instead. "Not much. It hurt her. I could see that, so I didn't press. Instead, _I_ talked about him. She mostly nodded and cried some more."

"Ah, hah," the Doctor commented.

Pandora thought silently for a while before speaking again. "She freaks out every time I get near the front door. She's worried I'm going to leave again."

" _Are_ you going to leave again?"

"I… I don't know. I don't want to do that to her, and it's hard on the streets, you know? But…"

The Doctor didn't prompt her this time, he just waited for her to find the words.

"But some of the reasons why I left? They're still there. And having her freak out about me leaving doesn't help. I need some space. And just because I came back doesn't mean I suddenly have it all figured out, you know? It's complicated."

"But you did go out, obviously. Both last night and tonight."

"Yeah. She doesn't know. But I figured, time machine, right? We could be gone and back before she misses me."

"Ah," the Doctor smiled. He brushed one hand lovingly over the Tardis door trim. "You want to take her for a spin?"

Pandora's eyes widened and she bounced on her heals. "You _can_ have me back tonight, right?"

"We can spend years traveling the universe and be back tonight."

"Well, let's not let it be years. My mum will really, properly freak if I'm twenty-something tomorrow."

The Doctor pushed the door open. "Just set your box anywhere," he said. "Safe as houses in here."

"You thought it would just be that easy, didn't you?" Pandora said, suddenly serious. "Before I go anywhere with you, I have something I need to say. I've had some time to think about what you did. I understand it came from a place of love, but it was still an invasion of my privacy. It was unfair and unwanted, and worst of all, it was part of a pattern of deceptive behavior."

The Doctor started to object, "When have I —"

Pandora ticked off on her fingers, "You brought me into that bank, knowing it was going to be robbed, and you didn't tell me. You let me think we were stranded on that dead planet when you knew we had an escape. You knew it was these Sea Devils, probably before we even got to Greece, and you would have kept me in the dark. If we're going to travel together, we need to be able to trust each other completely. No more hiding anything, or doing things behind my back. No more lies."

The Doctor stood quietly for a while. "Agreed. No more lies."

Pandora watched him for a bit, then punched him on the arm. "Better not." Suddenly she smiled brightly, like it was all a joke. She pushed past the Doctor and stood in awe of the Tardis interior.

The Doctor rubbed his arm, and got a far away look. He couldn't help but think of that figure of light he saw overlapping hers just before he fell unconscious back on Thasos.


End file.
